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High Utilizers of Hospital Services Include These Patients

J Investig Med; ePub 2016 Jun 24; Walsh, et al

Publish date:: July 19, 2016

High utilization patients share similar demographic and clinical features, according to a case-control analysis involving 600 individuals.

Investigators compared the costliest patients admitted at a single institution (n=220) to randomly selected controls (n=400) from that center. Among the results:

• The average cost for the highest utilization patients was more than $126,000, compared with nearly $16,000 in the control group.

• The high utilization group included those with primary service of hematology-oncology, as well as those with cancer.

• High utilization patients had a 20% in-hospital mortality rate, vs 8% for controls.

Citation: Walsh D, McVey M, Gass A, Zhang J, Mauldin P, Rockey D. Identification of high resource utilizing patients on internal medicine hospital services. [Published online ahead of print June 24, 2016]. J Investig Med. doi:10.1136/jim-2016-000118.

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